The North Carolina Historic Preservation Office launched HPOWEB in the spring of 2011. A lot has happened in the intervening two years and we are excited now to announce the imminent release of version 2!

As we perform some long-awaited data migrations and software tweaks, you may notice some minor changes in the existing HPOWEB website. For one, we will slightly alter the symbology of the points, providing them with what we believe is a cleaner and more modern feel.

For example, here are two screen captures of Bertie County that compare the old and new symbology:

Old symbology

New symbology

Old Search functions

More importantly, HPOWEB users will be able to search all data classes at once. Currently, a user who wants to locate a resource based on a name, description match, or Site ID number might have to perform up to three separate searches before finding their point of interest (with “Search NR,SL, DOE”, “Search Local Landmark/District”, and “Search Surveyed”).

With the changes taking place, users will be able to search the entirety of the mapped historic resources, regardless of their designation or landmark status.

But wait, there’s more!

You may have noticed that we have scanned as PDFs all of the National Register nomination forms. These are available in an alphabetic list on the NC HPO website (here), as well as from within HPOWEB. The information box of any National Register listing includes a hyperlink to its nomination form PDF.

We have now mapped over 50,000 resources, including all designated resources — those with National Register (2800+ resources), Study List (4200+) , and Determined Eligible (1200+) status.

The new version of HPOWEB will feature several new enhancements and tools. Look for a future announcement about those.

Finally, a note to our heavy-duty GIS users, who may be directly consuming our published web map services. (If that sentence makes absolutely no sense to you, then continue about your day. We’ll talk again soon!)

Currently, the NC HPO is delivering resource data (point and polygon) through a variety of WMSs, one for each feature data class (National Register, Study List, Determined Eligible, Local Landmark, Surveyed). We are in the process of changing the structure of our geospatial database and expect to deliver the same data through ONE service, with multiple sublayers for each data type (including point and polygon).